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I find it challenging to reconcile my checkbook so the issue of raising or not raising our country’s debt ceiling is a bit esoteric for me. I do know we are in credit rating chaos which can be horrifically expensive for us as a nation (and very lucrative for our payees). Whichever way our Congressional leaders go we are still going to be in tremendous debt. I’m putting off painting my house because I don’t want to incur debt. But we all know houses don’t improve spontaneously and need maintenance so putting it off isn’t the answer. The answer is to buy better paint and take care of maintaining it by frequent cleanings and spot painting as time goes on. Can we do that for our country?
We don’t have to be financial wizards to know what has happened to our country is the fault of our country’s leaders. That is hard for some to accept until they understand that our country is run by large corporations who have our leaders in their deep pockets and don’t give a crap about our credit rating, our mortgages, our oil dependency, our disappearing resources, our jobs outsourcing to the moon, our education system hitting the bottom of the barrel while top education administrators earn huge salaries and outrageous retirement benefits sufficient to support a small island somewhere in the Pacific, our infrastructures disintegrating into crumbling piles of crap while criminal contractors milk local and state government agencies for huge sums of money then they buy inferior and dangerous materials instead of the expensive materials promised in their bids and pocket the difference, our inability to manage drug lords here and elsewhere at the expense of our citizens, our pathetic and deplorable health care system, our constant devotion to wars we have no business being involved in (wars are very expensive, possibly the most expensive system in the entire world and our biggest government budget item and we know how well our returning veterans are being treated at our disappearing veterans hospitals), and the list is quite long but I’m depressed typing this crap so I’ll move on.
Case in point---when the mortgage fiasco hit our country the banks and mortgage companies were mandated to assist homeowners with modifications and that was a load of crap and scant few got any relief at all. Now we are supposed to believe that the proper way to handle our credit ceiling will make or break us as a nation. Really? WE ARE ALREADY BROKEN. Threatening to not pay 90-year-old seniors living in tenement houses their pitiful little Social Security checks is absolutely criminal behavior and it’s not going to happen anyway. It’s a fear tactic piece of crap fashioned to scare us into hanging on every word of the politicians/corporation CEOs and accepting whatever piece of crap they come up with to shove down our throats so that we will believe the malarkey they push on us.
I know. I’m using the word “crap” too much. Not very professional. Believe me when I say I’m practicing extreme restraint. I have many more words that would fit better but I don’t want to be arrested or kicked off the internet. And I don’t give a crap. I’m sick of being told that this or that must happen to help us “continue” to recover. Recover? Really? Are we recovering? Did I miss that on the evening news? We’ve been recovering?
I’m going to call my credit card companies and ask them to raise my limits by, oh, say, 150%, and then I’m going to go out and spend it all. Then I’ll ask for it to be raised again. Next, I’m going to contact my utilities and tell them that I can no longer pay them, that they are going to be cut in my budget strategy, and that it’s not my fault I had to raise my debt ceiling. Our country’s credit limit has been raised many times prior to this latest hoopla. So what’s good for the country is good for me. That makes perfect sense; right? Of course, I still have a house that wasn’t stolen from me by corrupt millionaire bankers.
Raise the ceiling, lower the ceiling, keep the ceiling as is. It makes absolutely no difference whatsoever to those of us out here in the trenches. We are being screwed every which way we turn. We’re in such a deep hole that a couple generations are going to live and die and not have any relief whatsoever from the mess we are in. They won’t own homes, they will have to skip college for themselves and their kids, they will work at crappy jobs because that’s all that’s going to be available, they won’t buy cars, go on vacations, have Sunday picnics. They will work and slave and---yikes! Sounds like a Dickens novel.
[The Debt Ceiling and The Tooth Fairy are alike because both require pain, a little blood, and all you’ll end up with is pocket change.]
(Debt Ceiling Definition: Since 1917, Congress has agreed on a limit of how much debt the U.S. can owe without risking default, and legislators raise the limit when they feel we need to borrow more money to sustain the economy. The legislature has raised the debt ceiling 74 times in the past 50 years, and about ten times since 2001. At this point, some voters and leaders feel that it doesn’t even make sense to have a debt ceiling, since Congress has the option to raise it virtually any time.)
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